We Never Truly Know

It's been a pretty lousy week. A man that I'd known of for over 40 years, and known, lightly, for almost 20 years, died. I learned his name from west Tennessee high school basketball. He was very, very good. Good enough to be All State, and High School All American. Good enough to get an NCAA Division 1 scholarship. And play.
I wanted to be a basketball player. I stalled out at 5' 6 1/2". And I like pizza.
I made his acquaintance because he also became an incredible musician. He often told the story of how one of Memphis' legendary guitarists, Teenie Hodges, taught him how to play. He was signed to a national recording company. He had a legit top 10 hit. He made a couple of great albums. Then he got caught in the vagaries of the recording industry, his company going belly up, and leaving him unpromoted, with a contract hanging over his head, and needing years to get out from under it. He played around town, frequently, in the years when I was able to haunt most of the music venues. I heard him often enough he began to recognize me at his gigs. We talked a little.
I wanted to be a musician. I bought a guitar. I learned how to strum a few chords. OK, for playing along with the cd player, with only my ears in attendance. Never got any better than that.
He was a scholar. He did good, profound work on one of the Nobel-winning Irish poets from the earlier part of the 20th century.
I majored in history, then got diverted for 28 years.
I did some really stupid stuff in my high school and college years. The kind of stuff that would have caused me to take the car keys away from my children, permanently, if I'd caught them doing some of the same stuff I did. But, for whatever reason, I was lucky. I didn't hurt myself or anyone else. And I didn't wind up addicted. I don't know why. It just worked out that way.
He did some stupid stuff as a young man, too. Same kind of stuff as me. But he wasn't lucky. He wound up addicted. I don't know why. It just worked out that way.
He went through hell, but found a door. That door was faith, the church, and ministry. He moved through all of the required steps, and came up for ordination. He was four years older than me, but I'd already passed through those steps of the process a few years ahead of him.
I voted for his admission.
He'd been through hell, but he was determined that he wasn't going to leave anyone else there. He did the various kinds of work that ministry requires, but he put tremendous time, effort, and skill into reaching addicted people, because he knew what they were dealing with, and going through.
He was great at it.
I couldn't begin to estimate the number of people whose loads were made lighter, and lives were made better because he was there for them. He found a church, or they found him, or pastor and church found each other, where he could focus on that sort of ministry, and he helped lead that work into being a vital part of his church's life.
Then, apparently, his addiction reared its head again. The news reports said he was in a rehab facility. Today they reported that the coroner's autopsy said the cause of death was suicide by hanging.
We never truly know how it's going with someone else. Every time I saw the guy, or listened to his music, I thought to myself, what a guy! How I'd like to be like him, in any one area of his incredible talents! Much less, have all of them! But he, clearly, was hurting, and struggling, no matter the face that he invariably presented when you ran into him.
I'm grieving his passing. I'm heartsick over the circumstances of it. I wish that, in that awful moment, he could have found solace in his impact on the lives of so many people fighting addiction, no matter how his own fight was going right then. I wish that he could have found solace in the poetry that was so dear to his heart. I wish he could have banged it out on his guitar, and written another new song that would have spoken for him and to so many of us. I wish he could have picked up a basketball and hooped it out until things looked better. I wish someone could have been there to wade through it with him. I wish I'd been able to make the offer of help, myself.
But he's gone now. I don't know why. It just worked out that way.
And I'd like to think that I'll be a little more intentional, now, about trying to know what's going on in the people in my circle of acquaintance.
Because we never truly know.